Too "Twee" for Words!

Before we headed to the Bletchley Park and the Midlands (Birmingham and Chesterfield), we spent several days in the Cotswolds. The countryside and villages in that area could not be more picturesque and quaint. The Cotswolds are roughly 25 miles (40 km) across and 90 miles (145 km) long, stretching south-west from just south of Stratford upon Avon to just south of Bath. It lies across the boundaries of several English counties; mainly Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire and parts of Wiltshire, Somerset, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. During the Middle Ages, the Cotswolds became prosperous from the wool trade with the continent, with much of the money made from wool directed towards the building of churches. Many of the buildings are made from the very unique honey-coloured Cotswold stone which can vary in colour from dark to very light. There are a myriad of charming villages to explore here - some very well known and others, hidden treasures. We managed to see quite a number of them. Our first stop was in Stow-in-the-Wold where the village square still has the old stocks in place. Our base for this part of the trip was Bourton-in-the-Water, a quite touristy village on the River Windrush (think "small stream" - not a river!). We also visited Lower Slaughter and its iconic waterwheel (yet another "star" in many English country calendars) and managed to get to Bibury to see the National Trust cottages in Arlington Row. These are former weavers' cottages dating from the 1500s.